Sneak preview in Rome on Thursday 4 December
Biblioteca di Storia Moderna e Contemporanea, 4:30 PM
Experimental project funded by the PNRR. AI as a narrative tool with potential for education, science communication and edutainment. Pilot episode featuring historian Francesco Benigno (SNS Pisa) on the value and meaning of History. Preview screening in Rome on Thursday 4 December at the Biblioteca di Storia Moderna e Contemporanea.
Catania/Rome, 2 December 2025 — The experimental use of Artificial Intelligence as an innovative “ live” narrative tool, with significant educational potential, supporting a live-action docu-series dedicated to Italian intellectuals and artists of our time.
This is the challenge of “ Lectio Digitalis” , a research project by the Academy of Fine Arts of Catania — Abact (funded by the PNRR through the EU and MUR), whose pilot episode will be previewed in Rome on Thursday 4 December at the Biblioteca di Storia Moderna e Contemporanea (4:30 PM, via Michelangelo Caetani 32).
Dedicated to the themes of History and featuring historian Francesco Benigno (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa), this first episode of Lectio Digitalis takes the form of a hybrid narrative, through which doctoral students and Cinema Course students tested the potential of AI by grafting it onto the live-action footage of a culturally oriented format. A flow of knowledge brought to life by AI-generated visual inserts that allow the narrator to almost physically enter the events being described: from the fury of Parisians at the storming of the Bastille, to Syracuse two thousand years ago, with audiences of classical tragedies on the tiers of the Greek Theatre, to workers in the early twentieth-century factories, documenting the transition from an agricultural to an industrial civilisation and the dawn of the socio-economic revolution of the “ short century” . Here the scene comes alive with workers from a historic sulphur factory in Catania, now a cultural and museum hub (Le Ciminiere).
Following opening remarks by Giuseppina Mussari, Director of the Biblioteca di Storia Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome, Lina Scalisi (President, Abact) and Gianpiero Vincenzo (Abact lecturer and PNRR project coordinator), contributions will come from historians Aurelio Musi (University of Salerno), Maria Antonietta Visceglia (La Sapienza University — Rome) and Nicoletta Bazzano (University of Cagliari).
Gianpiero Vincenzo (Abact): “ The application of AI to video productions is still in its early stages, in constant evolution and transformation, but its potential in terms of education and edutainment more broadly is clear. This is an academic research project for which Abact has involved postgraduate and doctoral students, fully aware that young people — especially in these processes linked to new-generation digital technologies — are privileged interlocutors for the Academies, curious and often independent experimenters of innovative tools and languages across all art forms.”
The first episode of Lectio Digitalis, entitled “ La storia oggi. Con Francesco Benigno” , is directed by Luigi Patti (actor and screenwriter, Premio Solinas winner); director of photography Alessandro Costanzo (editing, colour correction and AI VFX); interviews by Vittoria Mascellaro (doctoral student at Abact alongside Costanzo). Scientific consultancy by historians Nicoletta Bazzano (University of Cagliari) and Lina Scalisi (University of Catania).
The “ Lectio Digitalis” series is produced by Abact as part of the PNRR C-Fabit project, funded by the EU and MUR (Ministry of University and Research).
THE PNRR C-FABIT PROJECT
C-Fabit stands for Cinematic Futures: Bridging Art, Technology and Interdisciplinary Training. Drafted by the Academy of Fine Arts of Catania (lead institution), the project can count on funding of over 5.2 million euros (5,248,478.40 euros).
The project’ s objective is to make the Academy of Catania a hub for film production that is also useful to cinema professionals, providing logistical and strategic support for production companies that increasingly choose Sicily as a preferred location for films, TV series, historical and scientific documentaries, and commercials. From an educational standpoint, students have access to an extraordinary hands-on laboratory, developing on-set the professional skills connected to the world of cinema.
Project C-FABIT/PNRR | Press Release no. 5_2025
